The dragon style in Norwegian decoration

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1997 by Widar Halen

Gustav Gaudernack became Andersen's chief designer in 1892, when he arrived in Oslo after studying in Vienna. Some of his best pieces skillfully blend dragon ornament and medieval grotesques. He designed the drinking horn shown in Plate XVI for King Haakon VII in 1906, but thereafter worked more in the art nouveau style with an occasional sweeping dragon.

The silversmiths of Bergen, active since the Middle Ages, developed an urbane, refined style that affected the nationalistic revival of the dragon motif when it appeared in Bergen in the 1870s. The first to consciously launch the style was Theodor Olsen, who chose the traditional drinking horn (see Pl. XVIII). His showpiece at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 was a large stand on which coiled dragons and humorous goblins mitigated the formality of the piece.

Marius Hammer of Bergen became one of the largest producers of filigree silverwork in the country. The firm realized its full potential by combining filigree with plique-a-jour enamel. The most famous products of the shop were colorfully enameled Viking ships (see Pl. XV), which were acquired by a number of distinguished visitors to the Hammer shop, including King Wilhelm II of Prussia, the Prince of Wales, and King Chulalongkorn of Siam.

Henrik Bertram Moller was the fourth generation of his family to operate a silver-smithing business in Trondheim, not far from Nidaros Cathedral, Norway's largest and oldest. He trained in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Peter Hertz (1834-1895), the Danish court goldsmith famous for his Viking revival drinking horns. After further studies in Vienna and New York, Moller returned to Trondheim in 1884 and took over his father's shop. He blended scenes from the sagas with dragons and grotesque masks inspired by those in Nidaros Cathedral. His superbly chased and engraved silver objects (see Pl. XVII) attracted royalty and wealthy clients from around the world, including Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), for whom Moller made the two-handled cup with motifs from the saga of Thor shown in Plate XIX. Clearly, Moller satisfied the Victorian need for both the quaint and the grotesque, as did the ceramics of George E. Ohr (1857-1918)(6) in the United States and the designs of Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) in Britain.(7)

In 1906 Moller made a tea service [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED] that he suggested the women of Trondheim present to King Haakon VII and his queen at their coronation in Nidaros Cathedral that year. However, the design was so outre that it was rejected as unsuitable. Fortunately, King Chulalongkorn found it pleasing and bought it when he passed through the city that year. Unaffected by criticism, Moller continued to work in the dragon style until his death in 1937.

The dragon style, although frequently ridiculed, prevailed in Norwegian folk art and the souvenir industry until 1932 when Thor Kielland, then the director of the Kunstindustrimuseet, held an exhibition entitled The Fight Good and Evil in Handicraft and Embroidery, which featured all the dreadful dragons being offered to the public. This frantic last stand finally slew the dragon after more than haft a century of dominance in the decorative arts of Norway. Kielland would be most surprised to find the renewed interest in the dragon today.